Given the recent headlines relating to despicable behaviour in some of Ireland’s more prestigious nursing homes, the title of Abbie Taylor’s second novel, IN SAFE HANDS, has a rather ironic ring to it. Quoth the blurb elves: Nursing is everything to Dawn. Having lost her beloved grandmother to cancer, it breaks her heart to see a terminally ill patient suffering in the same way. So when the old lady begs Dawn to end her life, Dawn knows it is the kindest thing to do. But what she doesn’t realize is that someone in the hospital has been watching her. Someone who is intent on making her pay for what she’s done. Wracked with guilt, Dawn struggles to meet her tormentor’s demands. But she is already way out of her depth. And things are about to take a very sinister turn …I have no idea of what the book is like, given that I was only recently alerted to Abbie Taylor’s existence by the good works of one Niamh O’Connor, but I like the idea of it: the examination of a crime is the examination of society, as Michael Connelly says in his foreword to DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, and it’s axiomatic that any society can be judged on how it treats its weak, sick and most vulnerable. If anyone out there has read IN SAFE HANDS, I’m all ears …
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